Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

OCTOBER 18, 2007

I looked over Allan Benamer’s post on the Convio and Kintera initiatives, I looked harder at the Convio Open and Kintera Connect docs, and I also had a chat with some Kintera folk. Allan is right – the Kintera API is more comprehensive, and provides for more flexibility than the Convio API. I have a few comments.

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Open Platform Kintera API 100

Judi Sohn

APRIL 28, 2011

If it's new code that's never been emailed before, I highly recommend you use Email on Acid to test first. I've tried a number of email testing services. After the email template passes browser tests, you can paste it into Salesforce. Email on Acid is by far my favorite and very reasonably priced.

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Template Contact Adobe Tutorial 154

Care2

JUNE 10, 2012

If you are looking to start a welcome series or freshen up your existing one, check out these four tips from Convio’s latest report. Test Timing of Messages. Test the frequency of welcome messages and analyze the results to determine the best times to send your welcome series. inspire people to get more involved.

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Tips Create Convio Advocacy 65

Care2

JULY 29, 2011

Convio and Donordigital recently helped seven large US nonprofits test different versions of their donation pages, and shared some of t heir results in a new whitepaper. From the whitepaper: “In our experience, a typical web donation page that has never been tested converts less than 15 percent of the visitors that reach it.

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Donation Tips Convio Test 73

Judi Sohn

APRIL 28, 2011

If it's new code that's never been emailed before, I highly recommend you use Email on Acid to test first. I've tried a number of email testing services. After the email template passes browser tests, you can paste it into Salesforce. Email on Acid is by far my favorite and very reasonably priced.

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Template Contact Adobe Tutorial 100

Connection Cafe

NOVEMBER 14, 2011

Read the post, and the linked white paper about the research and testing that went into this sweeping declaration. This post piqued my interest in part because of a vibrant discussion held at the Convio DC Users Group last week about end-of-year fundraising.

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Convio Org DC Test 28

Connection Cafe

MAY 4, 2012

Today, Friday May 4, 2012, is my last day at Convio. In the end I decided to reflect on my favorite quote by Mahatma Gandhi, “be the change you wish to see in the world,” as I feel it encapsulates the Convio story very well. I believe Convio is emblematic of this model.

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Change Convio Adopt Hurricane 54

Care2

JULY 25, 2011

Convio helps jumpstart your brainstorming with their new guide - Crafting Subject Lines That Work: Making Email Appeals More Effective. Even though the sidewalk may be frying eggs at the moment, it’s not too early to start thinking about your year-end fundraising. Then send the one that works best to the rest of your list.

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Rate email Open Tips 71

Connection Cafe

OCTOBER 6, 2011

David Glass from World Wildlife Fund and I had a blast spending our Wednesday morning with folks at the Convio Summit during our session "All Roads (Should) Lead To Sustainers.". Look for our book, published by Glass Heaven Convio WWF Publishing Co. then the best way to answer the question is to run a test. Author: Sally Heaven.

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Test Slides Convio Europe 34

Connection Cafe

APRIL 24, 2012

It is easy enough for the human eye to observe, "It looks like the test significantly outperformed the control." Think of a 95% confidence interval as an indication that if you were to take 100 different samples from the same population, the test would "outperform" the control in about 95 of the samples. SIGNIFICANT. CONFOUNDING.

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Analytics Sample Statistics Test 38

Connection Cafe

SEPTEMBER 12, 2011

Convio clients are innovating everyday… testing new combinations of multi-channel messaging, building on our open platforms, exploring social media, and shifting away from siloed departments and technology to an approach focused on constituent engagement. Everywhere I go I keep hearing the same word – innovation.

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Fort Worth Convio Austin Texas 26

Forum One

MAY 4, 2010

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post on how organizations can use Convio’s Online Nonprofit Benchmarks Study to determine how well they are doing online compared to others. They also pointed to specific testing done on their email campaigns, to determine the best copy to send to their constituents.

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Benchmark Convio Trend Statistics 50

Connection Cafe

NOVEMBER 28, 2011

At Convio Summit, our Art Director, Michael Chang, and I led the Mobile Homepage Design Slam session where we developed some mobile homepage layouts on the fly for audience volunteers. Build and test. Finally, be sure to check out your analytics data to see what the most common mobile platforms are for your visitors and test on those.

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Mobile Design Web Convio 36

Connection Cafe

AUGUST 4, 2011

They make copying and pasting URLs unnecessary and the Convio team is all about ‘em! HINT: remember to test the code and link to sites that look good on smartphones. In fact, my colleague Jonathan just posted something yesterday on this here blog about this fancy pants topic. Check it !

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Convio Hints Mobile Wikipedia 54

Judi Sohn

JULY 27, 2009

It’s been a little over a month since I signed on the dotted line for Common Ground , Convio’s Force.com application for nonprofit donation and constituent management. Between them and Convio, I feel like we’re in good hands. Last week, Convio updated their managed packages to version 2.0. for donations.

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Convio Report Doc Contact 113

Judi Sohn

AUGUST 9, 2009

If I knew that I could make the switch from the old Salesforce nonprofit Starter Pack to Convio Common Ground in less than 6 weeks, I would have made this move months ago. Tags: Geek Posts Salesforce Common Ground Convio database. Yes, it was time consuming, but not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be.

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Convio API Test Contact 100

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

APRIL 30, 2008

We got into a quick email conversation and it gave me an opportunity to test the Cute Dog Theory a bit further. Hat Tip Jordan V at Convio ) Shelley Bernstein, staff members at the Museum responsible for social media projects, left a comment on my blog. did Shelley have a dog. Turns out she has not one, but two pit bulls.

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Museum Indianapolis Jordan Artist 50

NTEN

FEBRUARY 18, 2009

With matching funds from Convio , we've now got enough funding to send 18 people to the NTC. I've been looking for training opportunities just like 'Building and Sustaining Online Communities', 'Communities Without Borders', 'An Open Civic Engagement Platform', and 'Testing. Behold: Tags: scholarships NPTech convio 09NTC.

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NTC Convio Widget NTEN 36

Connection Cafe

MARCH 18, 2011

Another day, another hallway conversation at Convio - this time about segmenting your e-mail housefile. At some point if you create, say, 35 segments, that translates into real staff time setting up the message, testing each variant, and managing the audience selection. Author: Sally Heaven.

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Report Amazon Demographics Convio 42

Connection Cafe

OCTOBER 5, 2011

Our presentation yesterday at the Convio Summit showed attendees that do-it-yourself set up isn’t all hocus-pocus. Walk/Run systems like Convio's TeamRaiser give us a great amount of information and insight into our event participants. Are you taking full advantage of the event software available to you? How do they.

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Tools Badge Convio Instruction 32

Connection Cafe

OCTOBER 3, 2011

She is co-moderator of the popular community-led Nonprofit Salesforce Practitioners listserv and will be joining Convio’s Common Ground team as a full-time employee in January 2012. We adopted Convio Common Ground for better integration with fundraising and email marketing in 2009. Want to try out some fancy code?

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Tips Cancer Convio Listserv 29

Connection Cafe

MAY 27, 2011

Guest blog alert: Donna from Charity Dynamics (a Convio Solution Provider ) is sharing an real-life example of how integrated marketing and fundraising helped a nonprofit increase online revenue by more than 100%. Though not all campaigns were replicated online, major testing was replicated. Author: Cheryl Black. What were the results?

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America Results Volunteer Offline 24

Connection Cafe

SEPTEMBER 23, 2010

Test your messages – use different messages and calls to action, track trends and iterate the most effective techniques. 10 Tips to Jumpstart Your Social Media Success View more presentations from Convio. Debbie helped wrap up the dicussion with some of the phenomenonal results the ASPCA has experienced.

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Social Media Tips Media Social 54

Connection Cafe

MARCH 12, 2012

You’ve probably noticed that many of us at Convio have been thinking and talking a lot about multichannel communication with constituents. Author: Corey Pudhorodsky.

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Storytelling Interaction Channel Technique 51

Connection Cafe

FEBRUARY 8, 2010

Convio’s proven methodology , ensures that clients take a more iterative, quick hit approach that allows them to see results faster while tackling the larger web presence redesign in parallel. Once finalized, we designed a sharp new look and feel, which is live on the site today.

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Haiti Convio Site Interview 28

Connection Cafe

MARCH 20, 2012

Mobile Web platform : In some cases, your current Content Management System (CMS) may be able to detect what type of device your site visitors are using and render your content accordingly (as is the case with Convio CMS). So at the very least, be ready to do some testing to figure out what works for you.

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Mobile Blackberry Convio United States 30

Connection Cafe

NOVEMBER 8, 2011

The following post is by Dennis McCarthy, Convio's VP of Strategy and Organizational Practice. Had their supporters been much older I would have split tested telemarketing after the last direct mail effort. From Convio Next Generation of American Giving report, we know that Matures respond to telemarketing and less so email.

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Convio Mail Lesson Channel 26

NTEN

MARCH 16, 2009

Convio is one of the featured companies at the first-ever Austin Interactive Showcase at SxSW as one of "16 Austin companies to showcase the interactive brain power and technology innovation" of the popular media conference's host city. M+R released a new case study on the impact of premiums in online fundraising campaigns.

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NTEN Austin Tips America 36

Care2

JULY 22, 2011

If your provider doesn’t offer email client testing you have a some good options, including Email on Acid and Litmus. Convio offers some guidance on building mobile-friendly donation forms here (note you need to be a logged-in Convio community member). It doesn’t make sense to go full-throttle with a mobile template.

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Mobile email Strategy gMail 77

Connection Cafe

APRIL 10, 2012

That meets the common-sense sniff-test to me personally. We’re very excited that Jayne will be our guest speaker at this month’s free Convio webinar: “Volunteer Management: 5 Trends that Can Improve Your Fundraising Bottom Line.”

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Volunteer Giving Trend Roles 48

Connection Cafe

MARCH 30, 2011

Convio acquired StrategicOne earlier this year, and they have done significant analytics on disaster donations with some hefty data sets to look at, so Katie Beth had some excellent suggestions. Once we have a hypothesis about who you are like, we create an experimental design that will test different communication strategies.

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Disaster Donor Japan Test 26

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JUNE 28, 2007

Get more strategic how you pick ad words, create ads, and test test test test. SalesForce/Google AdWords Learning Center Google AdWords Learning Center Leveraging Google AdWords for Fundraising Convio Primer on SEO. Resources: VolunteerMatch SalesForce/Google AdWords Case Study. Which Keyword Research Tool To Use.

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Adwords Google Game Campaign 69

Connection Cafe

APRIL 19, 2016

Campaigns push staff, vendors, and consultants to stretch and test the limits of best practices and tools in communication, fundraising, advertising, branding and targeting. With the campaign stakes high, they’re all looking for “the next big thing” to make the winning difference. Lesson Two: Social Networking.

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Lesson Campaign Turkey Fundraising 20

Connection Cafe

APRIL 28, 2009

Real-life training Job descriptions Testing Management procedures. Test – make sure you are offering both online and offline opportunities to maximize participation and test effectiveness. One-on-ones Events Door Knocking Recruit entire organizations. Power analysis Protest Lobby Recruit allies Phone bank. Start small.

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Organization Community Online Offline 23

Connection Cafe

SEPTEMBER 30, 2010

The default configuration for a recurring gift form in Convio looks something like this: The suggestion was to simplify the form, making it look something like this: Truth be told, I’m a marketer. The question was whether or not, on a recurring donation form, to ask the user to determine the duration of their gift.

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Giving Gift Convio Registration 32

NTEN

APRIL 16, 2009

It's important to complete several donation transactions to test your giving form in this case to uncover issues. An email with good open and click rates that has a very low conversion rate may signal a technical issue with your giving form. Conversion Rate = # Conversions / # Emails Delivered. Defensive Email Metrics.

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Metrics email Campaign Rate 53

Connection Cafe

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Jessica: I created a new donation form by using my original donation form (done by Convio), copying it and then editing it. It also lets you test your form. Otherwise, you end up changing the form that Convio set up for you. donation=form1 -- this is my original Convio form https://secure3.convio.net/cochrl/site/Donation2?idb=1775077442&df_id=1260&1260.donation=form1

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Slides Convio Colorado Children 20